Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the spiralling violent crime must be judged in “context”.

Grilled over the killings, Ms Dick went on to claim that the spate of violent attacks was not making London “unsafe” as a whole but is only affecting “certain communities”:

“I regret every single one, but I do think we have to have some context.”

“This is affecting particular communities, it is not making this whole city unsafe.

“It’s not making young people in general unsafe, it’s not dragging most young people into crime.”

She also echoed Mayor Khan’s criticism of government policy:

I answered a radio interview in which I said, in effect, of course austerity has probably had something to do with it, by which I mean, of course, the other services as well as the police.

“But I would be naive to suggest that reduced numbers of officers on the street, for a whole variety of reasons, including – and I’m talking across the country here – reduced officer numbers overall, have had no impact.

The Sadiq Khan – Cressida Dick Show amounts to what Billy Flynn called infamously in the musical Chicago, razzle-dazzle and hocus-pocus all designed to distract attention from their failure to keep Londoners safe. However, they are far from being fooled. Directly contradicting Ms Dick’s testimony, Alex from Lewisham, a cabbie, told LBC Presenter Ian Collins there are places that he would not drive his cab as it is like the “Wild West” and that his customers often thought London was one the safest places in the world but when they found out the truth they were “gobsmacked”.